Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#24054
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Robert Goodman represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 46 years in, and Robert is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Robert Goodman appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Robert. Sarah's Oil is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jorma Taccone, Cyrus Nowrasteh, Harry Wootliff and others, Robert Goodman helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Sarah's Oil (2025) as Wilcox · Gangs of New York (2002) as Forty Thieves Leader · The Final Countdown (1980) as Enlisted Man
Career snapshot
Ranked #24054 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1980–2026
Career length
46 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Sarah's Oil
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Sarah's Oil
Most frequent director
Jorma Taccone
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jorma Taccone
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.7
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2000s
7.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Gangs of New York — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Final Countdown.
Most productive era
2020s
7 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.51 film | 7.41 film | 5.51 film | 6.34 films |
| Action | 6.61 film | 6.51 film | — | 5.51 film | 6.51 film |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 5.51 film | 6.12 films |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 5.51 film | 6.51 film |
| Crime | — | — | 7.41 film | 5.51 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | — | 5.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Enlisted Man.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2025Sarah's Oil
7.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Carl Marshall.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
11 of 11 films
as Forty Thieves Leader
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Enlisted Man
Directed by Don Taylor
as Carl Marshall
Directed by Jorma Taccone
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Wilcox
Sarah's Oil (2025)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Wilcox gives Robert Goodman a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Forty Thieves Leader
Gangs of New York (2002)
Performance score7.2
Gangs of New York asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Forty Thieves Leader is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Enlisted Man
The Final Countdown (1980)
Performance score6.6
The Final Countdown asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Enlisted Man is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Carl Marshall
Over Your Dead Body (2026)
Performance score6.5
Over Your Dead Body asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Carl Marshall is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Wilcox
Start here. Sarah's Oil is the clearest statement of what Robert Goodman does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Robert at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Final Countdown (1980)
A deliberate change of key after Sarah's Oil — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Gangs of New York (2002)
A deliberate change of key after The Final Countdown — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Kevin Costner Presents: The First Christmas (2025)
Keeps the drama register of Gangs of New York but asks for a colder reading of it.
Over Your Dead Body (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Kevin Costner Presents: The First Christmas — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Don Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably The Final Countdown
Luc Besson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably Gangs of New York
Harry Wootliff
Director
1 film together
Notably True Things
Cyrus Nowrasteh
Director
1 film together
Notably Sarah's Oil
Jorma Taccone
Director
1 film together
Notably Over Your Dead Body
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Cyrus Nowrasteh
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sarah's OilMartin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gangs of New YorkDon Taylor
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Final CountdownJorma Taccone
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Over Your Dead BodyLuc Besson
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of ArcHarry Wootliff
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
True ThingsSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Sarah's Oil
as Wilcox
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Sarah's Oil
as Wilcox
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Sarah's Oil
as Wilcox
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
as Black beard
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Sarah's Oil
as Wilcox
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Robert Goodman has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
46 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Sarah's Oil
as Wilcox
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gangs of New York
as Forty Thieves Leader
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Sarah's Oil
as Wilcox
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Show
as Nicky Matchbright
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Sarah's Oil
as Wilcox
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Over Your Dead Body
as Carl Marshall
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Gangs of New York
as Forty Thieves Leader
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Gangs of New York
as Forty Thieves Leader
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Leonardo DiCaprio
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Robert De Niro
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Robert Goodman performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
